Snoring

I awaken in the middle of the night to make one of several trips to the bathroom and find that I am unable to go back to sleep. I was actually tired at bedtime so I figured I wouldn’t need a little helper like Ambien or Lunesta. We have both brands and switch off occasionally, perhaps fooling ourselves that we are not becoming dependent. My husband took his. It is now three a.m. and he is snoring as if he had swallowed a bear. If I take a pill now I will be out until late morning, at least, and that is unacceptable since I want to make a 10 a.m. body sculpting class. I have a sufficient amount of flab now to think I can actually mold it into something, but that’s another story. So I get back into bed and try to incorporate the sounds – the hawks and snorts and gurgles and growls- into a meditation that will lull me to sleep. It doesn’t work.

I am not complaining. My husband has been exhausted lately having spent a month with some cruddy upper respiratory disease; three rounds of different antibiotics, steroids... the works. More often than not lately, it is I who is snoring and my husband is the one escaping the room in search of some quiet corner of the house. My sinuses have been horrible and the sounds I have been producing, well, let’s just say that I saw a moose in the woods outside looking lovingly toward my window. I know my snoring is terrible because, even unconscious, I can sometimes hear it. Have you ever been awakened by your own noise? I have been aware of strange, guttural lowing emanating from my head.

I am concerned because, as I have mentioned, we are going to spend a few days at my Mom’s house with the whole family. Now my Mom is a snorer. She won’t admit it but I have shared her room when visiting on occasion and she can get quite a buzz going. My brother is the champion snorer. The first time I heard him was one night when I was home from college. I heard a horrible crunching, grating as if something was chewing the walls and jumped into the hallway that separated our rooms fully expecting to see some large animal gnawing at his bones. But it was just him. So, with the four of us in one house I’m thinking I’d better alert the neighborhood watch… and bring the Lunesta.